Specifically, in this talk (recorded yesterday afternoon):
“We have to plan for four more years of Trump in the White House.” Wait, you are going to tolerate a full second Trump administration, which is clearly shaping up as a fascist nightmare? Seriously? Have you lost your mind?!
A very decent person criticizing Trump because “he’ll make us [US/USA] weaker.”
A longtime Marxian friend who (a) agrees with Bob Avakian’s critique of many liberals’ and “lefties’ ” militantly anti-scientific Wokeness/identitarianism and (b) agrees that the identitarian obsession with subjective narrative over objective reality helps fuel fascism by advancing a mindset of “might makes right” (since if truth is all about one’s identity narrative then politics and policy are reduced to who has the most power to impose their narrative) and then (c) defends Judeo-fascist Israel’s US-backed genocide in Gaza (and even Israel’s potential use of nuclear weapons someday), explaining our difference on Israel difference on the grounds that she’s (ethno-culturally) Jewish.
Left-identified people crying about the the fall of the merciless butcher and Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad (Butcher Al-Assad).
Snotty mfers suggesting I’ve fallen into “a cult” because I happen to agree strongly with tons of shit written and said by the remarkable revolutionary communist Bob Avakian (who I’ve actually read, unlike the cult-accusers).
“You back the Dems when you [accurately - PS] call Trump and his party fascist.” (Here I elaborate on my “self-defense” against this knuckle-dragging Trumpenleft accusation by reminding folks that my and others’ radical/communist critique and denunciation of the Republifascists and their Trunmpenvolk base is also and at the same time a radical critique of the Reichmost party’s Weimar enablers and conciliators - the dismal Dems. I elaborate here on that critique).
Some things to look at in connection with and support of what I am saying here:
On the fascist insanity of the coming Trump regimes mentioned in point 1, see last night’s “P”BS News Hour segment on Trump’s full-on Christian white nationalist (“Crusader”) — try FASCIST — pick to head the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-hegseths-controversial-religious-views-could-affect-military-leadership:
“Brad Onishi: [Hegseth’s giant] tattoos are symbols that are used by white Christian nationalists. Those who have adopted these Crusader images really see themselves as at war with those trying to take down American Christianity and Western civilization at large….[The leader of Hegseth’s extremist demonination] Doug Wilson is a firebrand pastor and theologian. He is somebody who reaches millions of people through his podcast, through his writings, through the schools that he's founded and the denomination of which Pete Hegseth's church is a part. Wilson is known for radical beliefs about gender. He doesn't believe that women should have any authority in the home or in society, much less the church. He has said that the time of enslavement in this country was the time of harmony between the races…Hegseth is symbolic. Hegseth represents a U.S. military envisioned as a vehicle for holy war. He's claimed to be a Christian Crusader, and that seems to be the kind of mentality he wants to implement as a leader….I think, additionally, Hegseth is your pick if you want to radicalize our military. Hegseth has said in his writings that he believes there are enemies within our own country, those who are trying to destroy the country from within our borders. If you want to be the kind of president who uses the Insurrection Act, to call in the military against uprisings in American cities, to use military force against protesters, Hegseth is the man for the job. And he will do so believing that he's not waging some kind of brutal criminal act, but instead a holy war against the infidels within America's city gates.”
Regarding point 2, on why the weakening of US global power is to be welcomed, please see Paul Street, “The World Will Not Mourn the End of US Hegemony,” Common Dreams, February 22, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/02/22/world-will-not-mourn-decline-us-hegemony
On point 3, for a brilliant discussion of how the reduction of oppression to subjective narrative fuels “might makes right,” see Bob Avakian, Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough of Marx and the Further Breakthroughs with the New Communism (Chicago: Insight Press, 2019), pp. 29-31. See also this brilliant lecture by leading Revcom Sunsara Taylor: “Woke Lunacy v Real Revolution”
On point 4, look (just for a visceral intro) at the horrors in Assad’s prisons reported on “P”BS last night: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/freed-syrian-prisoners-describe-the-horrors-they-faced-under-assad
(No love for “P”BS here, as my quotes around “P” show, but their NewsHour segments on Hegseth and Assad’s prisons last night were very much worth viewing.)
On point 5, for those who’s like to drop the “cult” charge long enough to actually read Avakian and get a sense of where he’s coming from, I’d start with his own personal memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond, which has a nice blurb from the widely beloved radical historian Howard Zinn. For a full list of Avakian’s publications, go here.
I’ve written a great deal on Point 6. See Avakian’s reflections last September on why the dismal Dems are so p a t h e t i c and Weimar (Vichy now?) in relation to acknowledging (not so much) and fighting (hardly at all) 21st Century US Amerikaner Republi-fascism.
Turns out my CounterPunch piece on Luigi Mangione versus Kyle Rittenhosue actually went up yesterday, not today. Read it here.
Share this post